This book explores in detail new protest organisation and mobilisation strategies of young activists in the digital age with the aim to identify the tactics that worked well against those creating high risks in the context of digitally supported protests. Focusing on Egyptian protests as well as peaceful protests in Syria, the book offers rich and unique data as it brings together the experiences and voices of the key figures involved in the protests, both on the ground and online. It challenges perspectives that defined the Arab uprisings as leaderless movements formed through the non-hierarchical communication of digital technologies. The author presents three kinds of leaders that shape the political communication environment in digitally supported protests and highlights the significance of their leadership skills to the movements' capacities.

This first examination in almost forty years of political ideas in the seventeenth-century American colonies reaches some surprising conclusions about the history of democratic theory more generally. The origins of a distinctively modern kind of thinking about democracy can be located, not in revolutionary America and France in the later eighteenth century, but in the tiny New England colonies in the middle seventeenth. The key feature of this democratic rebirth was honoring not only the principle of popular sovereignty through regular elections but also the principle of accountability through non-electoral procedures for the auditing and impeachment of elected officers. By staking its institutional identity entirely on elections, modern democratic thought has misplaced the sense of robust popular control which originally animated it.

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that natural resource wealth promotes autocracy. Oil and other forms of mineral wealth can promote both authoritarianism and democracy, the book argues, but they do so through different mechanisms; an understanding of these different mechanisms can help elucidate when either the authoritarian or democratic effects of resource wealth will be relatively strong. Exploiting game-theoretic tools and statistical modeling as well as detailed country case studies and drawing on fieldwork in Latin America and Africa, this book builds and tests a theory that explains political variation across resource-rich states. It will be read by scholars studying the political effects of natural resource wealth in many regions, as well as by those interested in the emergence and persistence of democratic regimes.

After a decade in local office, are indigenous peoples' governments in the Andes fulfilling their promise to provide a more participatory, accountable, and deliberative form of democracy? Using current debates in democratic theory as a framework, Donna Lee Van Cott examines 10 examples of institutional innovation by indigenous-party-controlled municipalities in Bolivia and Ecuador. In contrast to studies emphasizing the role of individuals and civil society, the findings underscore the contributions of leadership and political parties to promoting participation and deliberation -- even at the local level. Democratic quality is more likely to improve where local actors initiate and design institutions. Van Cott concludes that indigenous parties' innovations have improved democratic quality in some respects, but that authoritarian tendencies endemic to Andean cultures and political organizations have limited their positive impact.

Many of us are consumed by news cycles reporting on Trump's latest astonishing policy or declaration, and the overwhelming sense we have is one of confusion and incredulity - how could this be happening?

As the 2020 US Presidential race takes shape, Surviving Autocracy provides an indispensable overview of the calamitous trajectory of the past few years. Drawing on her Soviet childhood and two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia, acclaimed New Yorker journalist and prize-winning author Masha Gessen links together seemingly disparate elements of Trump's regime to offer a roadmap for understanding Trump's approach, policies and ultimate aims. Highlighting an inventory of ravages to liberal democracy, including the corrosion of the media, the justice system and cultural norms, she posits that America is in the throws of an autocratic attempt.

Gessen's penetrating analysis offers a new political discourse to replace that which has been so thoroughly degraded, and with it, a clearer path to action. Manifesto-like, Surviving Autocracy is threaded with solutions to the current situation, such as developing a political language that encompasses autocratic impulses, a more agile and honest media, and a visionary moral politics to counter Trump's extraordinary on-going assault.

This book studies the sources of inequality in contemporary South Korea and the social and political contention this engenders. Korean society is becoming more polarized. Demands for 'economic democratization' and a fairer redistribution of wealth occupy centre-stage of political campaigns, debates and discourse. The contributions offer perspectives on this wide-ranging socio-political change by examining the transformation of organized labour, civil society, the emergence of new cleavages in society, and the growing ethnic diversity of Korea's population. Bringing together a team of scholars on Korea's transition and democratization, the story the books tells is one of a society acutely divided by the neo-liberal policies that accompanied and followed the Asian financial crisis. Taken together, the contributions argue that tackling inequalities are challenges that Korean policy-makers can no longer postpone. The solution, however, cannot be imposed, once again, from the top down, but needs to arise from a broader conversation including all segments of Korean society. The book is intended for a readership interested in South Korean politics specifically, and global experiences in transition more generally.

Social movements and popular struggle are a central part of today's world, but often neglected or misunderstood by media commentary as well as experts in other fields. In an age when struggles over climate change, women's rights, austerity politics, racism, warfare and surveillance are central to the future of our societies, we urgently need to understand social movements. Accessible, comprehensive and grounded in deep scholarship, Why Social Movements Matter explains social movements for a general educated readership, those interested in progressive politics and scholars and students in other fields. It shows how much social movements are part of our everyday lives, and how in many ways they have shaped the world we live in over centuries. It explores the relationship between social movements and the left, how movements develop and change, the complex relationship between movements and intellectual life, and delivers a powerful argument for rethinking how the social world is constructed. Drawing on three decades of experience, Why Social Movements Matter shows the real space for hope in a contested world.

This book provides a systematic overview and in-depth analysis of the effects of rebel group inclusion on democracy following the end of conflict across the globe. It examines different types of rebel groups, addressing the subject matter through the lens of three dimensions - democracy, stability and governance - which structure the book and the individual chapters. As such, it affords a rare opportunity to bring together two heretofore separate research traditions - conflict studies and political parties. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party theory, civil wars and peacebuilding, democratization studies and state building and more broadly to comparative politics, development studies, and security studies.

The World Social Forum (WSF) was conceived as a platform for exchanging experiences and interlinking effective action. It has brought together people and social movements opposed to neoliberalism, imperialism and the domination of the world by capital. In this book, leading intellectual-activists from four continents take stock of the WSF-experience until the early 2020s and suggest new paths for collaboration between all who build other possible worlds. Since the first meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in January 2001, at least hundreds of thousands of activists have contributed to WSF activities locally, regionally, and globally. In the early years of the WSF, high hopes were often associated with the pink wave in Latin America, the Arab Spring, and similar events elsewhere. Many foresaw the coming of a systemic crisis and some activist-intellectuals even predicted with some accuracy the outbreak of the financial crisis. But not many predicted the strengthening of authoritarian capitalism that followed. The focus of this edited volume is on the multiple practices of struggle, organization, and conceptual innovation expressed in the main WSF slogan since 2001: "Another world is possible." Most chapters in this book were originally published in the journal Globalizations.

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others" once remarked Winston Churchill. In this day and age this quotation resonates more than ever. This book explores democracy from the perspective of social and cultural psychology, highlighting the importance of the everyday basis of democratic practices. This approach takes us beyond the simple understanding of democracy in its institutional guise of free elections and public accountability, and towards a focus on group dynamics and personal characteristics of the democratic citizen, including their mentalities, habits and ways of relating to others. The book features discussions of the two-way street between democracy and dictatorship; conflicts within protests, ideology and public debate; and the psychological profile of a democratic citizen and its critique. While acknowledging the limitations of today's democratic systems, this volume aims to re-invigorate democracy by bringing psychology to the table of current debates on social change and citizenship.

This book explores the stagnation of democracy in the Western Balkans over the last decade. The author maps regional features of rising authoritarianism that mirror larger global trends and, in doing so, outlines the core mechanisms of authoritarian rule in the Balkans, with a particular focus on Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. These mechanisms include the creation of constant crises, the use of external powers to balance outside influences, as well as state capture. The authoritarian patterns exist alongside formal democratic institutions, resulting in competitive authoritarian regimes that use social polarization to retain power. As the countries of the Western Balkans aspire, at least formally, to join the European Union, authoritarianism is often informal.

Throughout the twentieth century, the Chilean business elite has played a central role in the country, not just as entrepreneurs but also as political and social actors. The chapters in this book, the first in English on the history of Chilean business, focus on the importance of diversified family business groups in twentieth-century Chile, their dynamics, organisation, and management, and their interaction with foreign investors and the state. Using a range of company and government archives, as well as other contemporary sources in Chile, Britain, and the United States, the individual authors pay particular attention to many key topics: the evolution of the Edwards family businesses, those of Pascual Baburizza, Chilean corporate networks, British firms in the nitrate industry, the Anglo South American Bank, the Copec group, Compania Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego, the energy sector, SOFOFA (the industrialists' association), and the recent growth of Chilean multinationals.

This book offers new and compelling insight into the emergent shared culture of the relationship between political actors and journalists in nine European democracies. It is a truly comparative account of the attitudes of 2,500 political communication elites between Helsinki and Madrid on various aspects of the media's role in politics and on the mutual relationship of politicians, political spokespersons and journalists. The study identifies national political communication cultures across Europe over the importance of journalists in advocacy and commentary, pressures on the media and perceived political influence. It also highlights that professional roles determine the perception of news-making, the interpretation of daily political life and the ethos of professional conduct and interaction.

A Democracy That Works argues that rather than corporate donations, Republican gerrymandering and media manipulation, the conservative ascendancy reflects the reconstruction of the rules that govern work that has disempowered workers. Using six historical case studies from the emergence of the New Deal, and its later overtaking by the conservative neoliberal agenda, to today's intersectional social justice movements, Stephen Amberg deploys situated institutional analysis to show how real actors created the rules that empowered liberal democracy for 50 years and then how Democrats and Republicans undermined democracy by changing those rules, thereby organizing working-class people out of American politics. He draws on multidisciplinary studies to argue that when employees are organized to participate at work, they are also organized to participate in politics to press for accountable government. In doing so, the book opens up analytical space to understand the unprecedented threat to liberal democracy in the U.S. A Democracy That Works is a fresh account of the crisis of democracy that illuminates how historical choices about the role of workers in the polity shaped America's liberal democracy during the 20th century. It will appeal to scholars of American politics and American political development, labor and social movements, democracy and comparative politics.

From the Arab uprisings to the indignados movement and the global Occupy sit-ins, recent protests and civil unrest have sparked new debates about political organisation, media representation and the nature of contemporary citizenship. But is there anything new about these occupations of public space? How are these protests legitimised or undermined by the intense mediation of streets and squares? And how are these different from expressions of dissent in other contexts, including those of ethnic minorities in the New Orleans mardi gras and survivors of natural disaster in the Philippines? This book challenges the notion of a 'disappearance of public space' by reconsidering the significance of physical space and embodiment in the conduct and consequences of protest events. Looking at a range of assemblies-sustained and fleeting, spectacular and ordinary-this volume illuminates how square and street politics and their mediation become vehicles for new ideas of community, citizenship and public life.

This second edition examines judicial independence as an aspect of democratization based on the premise that democracy cannot be consolidated without the rule of law of which judicial independence is an indispensable part. It pays particular attention to the restraints placed upon judicial independence and examines the reforms which are being applied, or remain to be adopted, in order to guard against the different kinds of interference which prevent judicial decisions being taken in a wholly impartial way. Focusing on the growing authoritarianism in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, the book analyses the paradox of judicial activism arising from the independence endowed upon the judiciary and the rights bestowed on citizens by post-authoritarian constitutions. Finally, it asks how judicial accountability can be made compatible with the preservation of judicial independence when the concept of an accountable, independent judiciary appears to be a contradiction in terms. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of judicial studies, democratization and autocratization studies, constitutionalism, global governance, and more broadly comparative government/politics, human rights and comparative public law.

This book reflects on Nigeria's fourth republic, the country's longest democratic period since it gained independence from Great Britain. It argues that although constitutional or political democracy has lasted for over two decades in Nigeria and seen three successful democratic changes of power, Nigeria's democracy remains largely militarised. During Nigeria's fourth republic, political and socio-economic affairs have been increasingly dominated by a pervasive military presence and ideology, which has seen a redistribution of resources and government funds away from social programmes into an increase in security budgets, weapons proliferation, and internal military interventions and occupations. This institutionalisation of violence has turned the country into a national security state where the rule of force and violence rather than dialogue and compassion reflect everyday reality. Whilst acknowledging the history of militarisation during colonial and military rule, this book makes a compelling argument for considering the distinct character of the Nigerian nation state's path to militarisation over the last 20 years of experimentation with democracy. This book's fresh insights into the fourth republic's path to militarisation will be of interest to researchers of African politics, security and development.

This book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves. Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the 'democratic spirit' going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavor by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in. This book is of key interest to scholars and students in democracy, democratic innovations, deliberation, civic education and governance and further for policy-makers, civil society groups and activists. It encourages us to reshape democracy based on citizens' perspectives, aspirations and preferences.

This book addresses the impact of a range of destabilising issues on minority rights in Europe and North America. It brings together scholars from a range of disciplines This book will appeal to those with interests in minority rights, human rights, nationalism, law, and politics.

In Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy (2019), Jeffrey Friedman presented a sweeping reinterpretation of modern politics and government as technocratic, even in many of its democratic dimensions. Building on a new definition of technocracy as governance aimed at solving social and economic problems, Friedman showed that the epistemic demands that such governance places on political elites and ordinary people alike may be overwhelming if technocrats fail to attend to the ideational heterogeneity of the human beings whose control is the object of technocratic power. Yet a recognition of ideational heterogeneity considerably complicates the task of predicting behavior, which is essential to technocratic control-as Friedman demonstrated with pathbreaking critiques of the homogenizing strategies of neoclassical economics, positivist social science, behavioral economics, and populist democratic politics. In Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior, thirteen political theorists, including Friedman himself, debate the implications of Power Without Knowledge for social science, modern governance, the politics of expertise, post-structuralism, anarchism, and democratic theory; and Friedman responds to his critics with an expansive defense of his vision of contemporary politics and his political epistemology of ideationally diverse human beings. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review.

Western liberal democracy has a dual foundation of limited government implementing the will of the majority and protecting individual autonomy within a sphere of fundamental rights. Under the rubric of universal human rights Western societies take for granted that they tolerate all religions and treat all persons equally. However, through globalization and immigration Western societies are increasingly finding non-Christian people in their midst. This pluralism is causing polities to rethink fundamental notions of the boundaries of religious freedom, equality, and state neutrality. Three countries whose systems are based on the Western liberal democratic philosophy and which are religiously pluralist-the United States, France, and the Netherlands-are reacting in different ways. The politics of the hijab and burqa lie at the intersection of the political and legal spheres. Consequently, the political and legal spheres have each attempted to enforce differing versions of the concepts of equality and neutrality. A cross-cultural and cross-national survey of judicial decisions and legislative action in these countries demonstrates how each is balancing individual rights and communal bonds, and adhering to or retreating from previously accepted human rights norms for women and religious practices.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the instrumental value of democracy in a comparative perspective. Based on extensive analyses of quantitative studies from different disciplines, it explores both the expected beneficial and harmful impact of democracy. Democracy's reputation as delivering peace and development while controlling corruption is an important source of its own legitimacy. Yet, as this book acutely demonstrates, the arguments tend to be normatively driven interventions in ideologically charged policy debates. The book argues that we need neither a utopian framing of democracy as delivering all 'good things' in politics nor a cynical one that emphasizes only the 'dangerous underbelly' of this form of government. The author also raises critical questions about the value of the study of democracy: the choice for particular concepts and measures, the unknown mechanisms, and the narrow focus on specific instrumental values. This volume will be necessary reading for anyone interested in debates on democracy in the contemporary global context.

This book analyzes the political economy of the MENA region with a focus on pre-revolutionary political and economic conditions, the 2011 revolution itself, and post-revolutionary political processes in Tunisia. The author places particular emphasis on the political role of women, Islam, and democracy after the revolution, and argues that post-Revolution Tunisia serves as an ideal model for the MENA region to follow. This volume will interest scholars, students, researchers, and everyone who is interested in the politics of MENA and political economy.

This book employs a policy-based approach to examine the emerging governance structure in Taiwan, one of several countries in East Asia where democratic consolidation is firmly established. Each chapter provides a detailed investigation of reforms that have helped to strengthen Taiwan's democracy in such areas as elections, civil service recruitment, economic policy, social policy, environmental protection, civil rights, response to the COVID-19 pandemic, civil-military relations, and foreign and mainland China policy. As a study of Taiwan's democratic governance, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian politics, comparative politics, democracy, and Taiwan.

This book can be seen as two different books. The first is a history of political parties in ten nations (with the sections on France and Germany limited to specific periods). The second is an inquiry into the reasons for the different party systems that are found when applying similar proportional rules. In the specific countries that are analyzed, the authors put to the forefront community ties (specifically labor unions, some religious organizations and at times language) that intervene in the apparent political affiliation of a considerable number of voters. In addition, the authors add an explanation of the rise of new parties that hinges largely on whether or not alternatives exist that have not been tainted by having been part of the government or having been closely part of failed political institutions.